


No more shoulda beens

by 3White_Mage3



Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 15:03:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1108256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3White_Mage3/pseuds/3White_Mage3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taking JJ and Cougs beyond The Losers, because we all know their thing is eternal and transcendent.<br/>This is a gift to GLS, and I wish the gift were as beautiful and wonderful as the recipient.<br/>It's awkward, I know. It's unrefined.<br/>I tried to give you angst. I tried to give you earnestness.<br/>I hope you understand I gave you sincerity.<br/>L,<br/>XX</p>
            </blockquote>





	No more shoulda beens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Saral_Hylor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saral_Hylor/gifts).



> This is a gift to Saral_Hylor. Someone I am forever indebted to for so much.  
> She is more of a guiding light than she realizes to a lot more folk, and that includes all of God's little children, of which she takes such careful care.

"I want a baby."

Cougar basically gagged up his tequila shot at those words from Jake. He considered himself lucky the liquor didn't shoot out his nose although it burned like hell. "And that makes sense how?"

The sniper had taken note of the shift in their relationship these past two years. 

~~~

The watershed moment had been getting out of Bolivia relatively intact. Followed by re-establishing their legal innocence and their right to live in the US. After that had come the all-important decision as to whether to stay in the Army and be re-assigned and redeployed. Or to get out. For him, the decision was clear. Ten plus years of horror, culminating in the deaths of all those children in the jungle, had take too much out of the man and resulting in too much damage to his soul. 

He had been trained for what had been sold to him as relatively clean, surgical warfare: clearly identified bad guys, well-defined mission objectives with exactly delineated expected outcomes. Of course, little to none of that had turned out to be reality. Instead what he and the other Losers got was shitty intel, mixed messages, conflicting signals, a shitload of betrayal, and ultimately a total burn wherein they became wanted fugitives without a country and, for a year or so, without a future.

When the time came, he knew he wanted out. Like yesterday. But he wasn't going to leave the Army, the base, the barracks, the bed, if his Jake wasn't there beside him. The days of venturing out, whether on a mission not knowing if he was ever again going to see those trusting, needful blue eyes, or those nights out with the team when it was all about getting drunk, getting laid, and just letting go for a coupla minutes or even half an hour, were behind him. Far away in a different, much less meaningful world he never wanted to visit again. 

Lying in bed at night, running his fingers lightly through the soft hairs on JJ's belly and kissing small nothings on his forehead, Carlos had so badly wanted to ask Jake to come with him, to GET OUT, get away, build a life. But he didn't. While they were in the Army, he wasn't able to get down on his knees with the rings he kept carefully hidden inside the pocket in his rucksack and make things official -- let the world know that he had staked his claim for all time on a certain Jacob Francis Jensen. No matter how much things had changed in the military and no matter how much Clay acted as the craftfully oblivious CO, Cougar knew that the future depended on Jake's decision as to whether to re-up or get out. And he knew that had to be his partner's decision - unadulterated, unsolicited, uninfluenced. Pure.

Needless to say he was ecstatic when Jake, in his dress uniform with his black beret under his arm, had followed Cougar, in his dress uniform and the same tattered cowboy hat which the senior officers had long ago given up disciplining him for, in tendering his intent to not renew with the United States Army. 

~~~

"So, how do you think we go about this?" Cougar asked, leaning across the bar table and leering with a bare hint of an eyebrow wriggle under the hat. Because that would be too obvious and Cougs, in Jake's and the world's estimation, is anything but obvious. "I know I ain't shooting blanks and I'm no math major but you should definitely be knocked up a hundred trillion times over by now if that was gonna work."

Jake blushed the deep red that only a former Catholic altar boy could achieve and -- on an entirely non-related note, Father McConelly would be glad to know -- got hard as a rock in a split second. The man who could spew forth a million words a minute vocally and via his computer was suddenly struck dumb. 

He hesitated and then, as we was wont to do, just threw his thought out there on the table with, "I was thinking we could fly down to Bolivia."

Watching his other's face for the guaranteed tells, Jake rushed on, "We've built a life for ourselves here in New Hampshire. We're safe. As safe as anyone gets to be these days. We have everything we could ever wish for, with your security firm and my consulting business. I have my art and you have the horses. We have the house with the curtains looking out onto more acres of land than we know what to do with, the house that Nikki always said we deserved, Cougs. The one we had spent so many nights talking about and wishing for and doubting we'd ever have."

Jake moved the shot glasses and tequila bottle aside and took Cougar's hands across the table and looked into his eye. "You would be the best father. Like ever. Like in the history of fathers if they were to do one on New Year's Eve like they do top tv shows, you would be number one through ten. Like, if History Channel does a retrospective on fatherhood you would be up there ahead of Borgia and Stalin and Amin. Probably behind Joseph, but I hope you can understand that one." 

Cougar spared a minute to growl at the men who were lurking too close -- a dual-service threat to warn off the men whether they were hovering to take their chance at the gorgeous blonde man whom he'd been blessed with or, more mundanely, because they didn't like seeing two guys clasping each other's arms across the table. Carlos had never backed away from a fight that involved protecting his partner and he was more than happy to teach a few lessons in tolerance whenever the need arose.

Wisely, the bigots/potential suitors backed off. Cougar leaned across the table, gently grabbed Jake by the jaw to draw his lips into a soft, gentle kiss, and said, "I would love to give you a child. Let's go to Bolivia."

Jensen moaned, "as long as we don't stop trying to make one on our own."

"Deal."


End file.
